


Looking

by CC99trialanderrorgirl



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: But no real angst in the plot, Characters who love each other, Chuck takes matters into her own hands, Coming In Pants, F/M, LITERALLY, Masturbation, Mention of rope, Ned doesn't realize how much Chuck wants him, Ned is a Good Dude who is Trying His Best, Ned is shook, Ned just loves Chuck so much, Ned's everpresent inner anxiety and inner angst, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Smut, Voyeurism (Consensual), Watching, making it work, the canon typical "touch equals death" thing (in case you're not familiar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:54:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22575145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC99trialanderrorgirl/pseuds/CC99trialanderrorgirl
Summary: Ned’s fingers grip the armrest of the chair tightly, knuckles turning white against the dark wood. Sweat drips down his brow, plastering his hair to his forehead. His thighs shake with the effort of remaining still...Or, the one where Ned doesn't realize how much Chuck wants him, Chuck enlightens him, and Ned learns that there is plenty of pleasure to be had in looking without touching.
Relationships: Charlotte "Chuck" Charles/Ned
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	Looking

Ned’s fingers grip the armrest of the chair tightly, knuckles turning white against the dark wood. Sweat drips down his brow, plastering his hair to his forehead. His thighs shake with the effort of remaining still.

Chuck is on the bed, her sweet yellow sundress long discarded, two fingers dipping rhythmically inside herself.

As she throws her head back and writhes, Ned distantly hears himself moan. He grips the chair arms even harder, forces himself not to move. If he were to lose control, it would be disastrous…

This was not his idea.

Ned is always careful around Chuck, because she is precious and he loves her with all the strength of a first and only love. He would never have put her life at risk this way. Except, on this particular afternoon, they are in the kitchen, and it’s not really any different than any other afternoon they have spent together since he brought her back to life. But, for some reason, this afternoon is the afternoon on which she turns to him and says, casual as ever, “I can’t take this anymore.”

Thinking she means their relationship, Ned prepares himself for the worst, and stands still, trying valiantly not to cry, a single plump strawberry still set in his gloved hand.

“No, no,” she soothes, and waits for him to collect himself and look at her before continuing. “The tension,” she clarifies. “I can’t take the tension.”

“Oh?” Ned’s mouth is perfect and pink and round and wet in his innocent confusion, and she has to look away before she loses herself to it.

“The _tension_ ,” she clarifies again, putting careful emphasis on the word. His mouth remains a perfect O, but his eyes widen.

“Don’t…don’t you feel it?” Her eyes are round now, embarrassed and afraid that he doesn’t.

She’s wrong.

He feels it every minute of every day. If he let it, it could easily consume him. But Ned is a unique man, and he has grown used to holding his wants and needs, his base desires to touch and be touched, in check. No matter how badly he may want to touch. And with her, the stakes are so _high_ , that they can be equaled only by his desperate, frenzied desire to touch her, a desire that he buries deep down. It appears he has done too good a job of hiding it from her.

Apparently, she does not see the way he stares longingly at her breasts when she is concentrating on rolling out the dough, her eyes on her work. She must miss the hungry glances he throws at her ass when she bends over to pick something up or even just walks out of a room. She must not suspect the true nature of the quiet rustling sounds on the other side of the bathroom door at night, after he sees her let her hair down wearing nothing but a thin nightshirt.

He did not realize it would hurt her. He thought he was doing the right thing. But clearly, his devotion to her physical safety has been detrimental to other aspects of her wellbeing. So he swallows his awkward fears and forces the words out.

“I feel it every single moment of every single day.”

It comes out much more like a confession than he intended, like an admission of wrongdoing. And he supposes he does feel guilty. He sees her with an almost childlike love – she is all that is beautiful, all that is good, and she deserves all of his love, but none of his ugly lust.

It seems she wants it, needs it, maybe even craves it the way he does in the private confines of his mind. He needs to put aside his own guilt and show her.

But he remains afraid. What if he doesn’t satisfy her the way she wishes? It’s not as if he is very experienced. What if it, whatever _it_ is that they can even do, is not good enough? What if _he_ isn’t good enough?

And worse, what if she gets hurt somehow? The fears come flooding in, forbidden fantasies of skin on skin, his fingers in her hair, his palms full of her breasts, his hands gripping her hips as he - _No_.

He crushes the mental image before it overwhelms him, skin sticky, cheeks red and burning right there in the kitchen.

But while the fantasy is gone, banished deep into the recesses of his mind, allowed to be brought out only where there is at least one locked door between them, the thought remains: _What if he loses control?_

What if, overcome, he cannot stop himself? What if he causes her death?

Eventually, he finds the courage to lift his gaze from his shoes to her eyes. She looks shell-shocked. He goes to apologize, and it is shame flooding his cheeks this time, but she stops him. She throws her dish towel down to the floor, and it shocks him. She is…angry? Not a reaction he was expecting.

“How dare you,” she hisses, vehement and vicious. “How dare you _keep_ _this_ from me? How dare you allow me to believe I was _alone in this_?”

She dumps an entire bowl of rotten fruit on the floor, whirls around, and leaves. Ned just stands there, shell-shocked and wanting, his insides torn. Then he kneels, knees on the cold tile, and begins to clean the mess on the floor.

He speaks only in monosyllables for the rest of the day, and Olive very pointedly does not ask why Chuck suddenly left in the middle of the lunch shift and never came back.

That evening, Ned ascends the steps to the apartment with trepidation. Will Chuck be there? Will she speak to him? What will she say? The questions roll around and around in his head, and the anxiety in his chest grows, like a poison. It feels like the sensation he gets behind his sternum every time he brings someone back to life, only in reverse. He briefly clutches at his throat before bringing his hand to the door handle and turning.

The door swings open and, no, this is not a sight that Ned ever even dared hope to find.

Chuck is standing by her little bed, very obviously not wearing a bra under the flowing yellow sundress patterned with little white daisies. Her arms and legs are bare. She motions with her chin to the desk. The chair is turned outward, facing the bed. He sinks into it, and feels again like there is something caught in his throat when she wordlessly grasps the hem of her dress and draws it up, up, up, until it is cresting over her head and dropped uselessly on the ground beside her feet. Her hands come up to play with her breasts, gripping first the left and then the right, kneading and playing with them. His hands find the armrests on the chair and _grip._

He can’t breathe. She collapses back onto the bed, body propped up against the pillows so that he can see _everything_. His mouth waters, and his entire body feels primed with desire. He grips the chair harder, presses the soles of his shoes firmly to the floor. He’s not wearing his apron, just his black slacks and a white t-shirt. The shirt is nearly soaked through with sweat. Even in the dim light, he imagines she can see his nipples, hard and peaked with arousal. And speaking of…

One hand still playing with her breasts, Chuck is now bringing two fingers to her mouth, sucking on them obscenely. The saliva drips down her chin and Ned blanches. When those wet fingers slide into her wet body, he all but loses himself. He jerks in the chair, digs his fingernails into the teak to keep from doing something stupid. He moans out loud when she starts pumping her fingers in and out. He’s so hard it’s painful, and he’s sure she can see the not insubstantial evidence of his arousal tenting his pants rather impressively. He’s shaking, a whole body experience. As he watches, enraptured, she starts working her clit with her free hand and mewls. His face aches with the tension overtaking his entire body. He _can’t_ move. He can’t. His knuckles are turning white on the armrest. He’s never wanted to touch himself this badly in his life, but he’s afraid. If he lays even a single finger on himself, he’s sure he’ll lose control. He’d get up, stalk across the room, and pick her up. He’d kiss her, forcing his tongue into her mouth until she could barely breathe with the heat of it, only to throw her back down and take her hard and rough against the headboard, biting little half moon circles into her breasts with every thrust, feeling the claw marks of her nails raking down his back, feeling the blood pool in his abdomen, feeling the heat, the cloying tightness of being inside her, all of his –

Suddenly, the images behind his eyes blur with what is right before them, and it’s too much. Chuck is crying out now, writhing on the sheets. He never imagined he’d get to see her like this, never thought they’d be able to share such an experience. She’s slamming her fingers into herself so hard and fast that it appears almost painful, and God, what he wouldn’t do for those fingers to be his dick. He tastes blood in his mouth, and realizes he’s biting his lip so hard that he’s drawn blood. He’s sitting stock still, feet pressed firmly to the floor as he shakes in desperation. His cock is an arrow, pointing up at him. Chuck is looking back at him, body shuddering as she nears ecstasy, and suddenly, it’s too much for Ned. He grips the chair for all he’s worth as he starts to come, his entire body shuddering with the force of his release. On the bed, Chuck freezes, watching, enraptured, as the man she loves comes apart within her sight. _Finally._

For a moment, the only sound in the room is Ned’s desperate panting. At last, he dares to take one clawed hand off the armrest, and presses it gently against the wet patch in his slacks to knead the softening bulge beneath. His body shakes with the oversensitive aftershocks, and apparently, Chuck can take no more. She cries out, the sound of love and longing and utter ecstasy, and as he watches her body spasm, he feels his own body quiver one last time, and thinks this must be what making love feels like.

Afterwards, they don’t speak. Ned doesn’t trust himself to get up, afraid that the sight of her naked and spent body will overwhelm his sense of control.

“Ned?” Chuck squeaks from the bed, and her voice is small, wrecked, and devastatingly sexy to his ears.

“Thank you,” he hears himself saying, his tone one of desperate relief.

She sits up at that, drawing the sheets around her to protect her cooling body from the damp air.

“For what?” she asks carefully.

“For saving me from a lifetime of never doing that with you,” he replies, honest and sincere and so very Ned that for a moment she seriously considers death as an acceptable price to pay for kissing him.

“We can’t,” he says knowingly.

“Maybe next time we can,” she hesitates, then seems to decide something.

“Maybe next time we can take precautions,” she says carefully.

Ned looks at her, head cocked and quizzical in the semi-darkness.

“I could tie you to the chair,” she says.

“Oh.” Ned’s face is startlingly pink in the moonlight. He means to say, “That would work.”

“I think I would like that,” he says instead, and blushes even brighter.

“I think I would, too,” Chuck says.

“There is maybe a lot we could do with a little rope and some sturdy gloves, don’t you think?” Ned says, starting to smile. His customary verbosity returns as he starts to get excited, his mind working on the problem and throwing out a hundred solutions a minute, “I could rig up a –”

“Shhh,” she says, quiet and gentle. “Later. For now…” Her voice trails off seductively. “Would you like to watch me shower?”

Ned nods vigorously, mouth dropping open into that pretty, perfect O she loves so much. She drops the sheets and stands up, her beautiful naked body fully on display. In the half-light, she appears lit from within, his own personal moon come back to life. God, he loves her. She leans over the nightstand and carefully pulls on two gloves before walking over to his chair and extending her arm.

He laces his fingers with her gloved ones and follows her into the bathroom, staying one step behind, always careful to look but not touch.

But he’s smiling, because tonight, he learned that there are a lot more benefits to _looking_ than he originally thought.


End file.
